Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -… [739]

I’ve finally got a title for my book of Earthseed verses—Earthseed: The Book of the Living. There are the Tibetan and the Egyptian Books of the Dead. Dad has copies of them. I’ve never heard of anything called a book of the living, but I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that there is something. I don’t care. I’m trying to speak—to write—the truth. I’m trying to be clear. I’m not interested in being fancy, or even original. Clarity and truth will be plenty, if I can only achieve them. — , Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -…, 739

Note

The passage names the book that will outlive the girl who is writing it, and in the same breath states its own poetics: the self-correction ‘I don’t care’ after the digression about Books of the Dead re-centers the voice on what it actually wants. The repeated infinitive (‘I’m trying to speak—to write—the truth’) and the dismissal of ‘fancy’ and ‘original’ tell us how to read every verse that has come before in the journal: flatness is a choice, not a limitation.